


Drinking Buddies

by Robin Hood (kjack89)



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, M/M, Not really angst but like kind of a bummer, One-Sided Attraction, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-07
Updated: 2018-03-07
Packaged: 2019-03-28 06:24:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13898178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kjack89/pseuds/Robin%20Hood
Summary: Barba and Rollins weren’t friends. They were colleagues who some days could barely tolerate each other even in a professional capacity, let alone outside of one.They were also drinking buddies.





	Drinking Buddies

**Author's Note:**

> I was feeling morose and therefore decided to write this because hey, ain't nothing like bringing people down with me lol
> 
> Much thanks to AHF for the beta!
> 
> Usual disclaimer. Please be kind and tip your fanfic writers in the form of comments and/or kudos!

Barba and Rollins weren’t friends. They were colleagues who some days could barely tolerate each other even in a professional capacity, let alone outside of one.

They were also drinking buddies.

It had started during the death threats, which happened to coincide with a particularly bad bout of colic for Jesse and led to Amanda enthusiastically volunteering to pick up any overnight security detail shifts that Carisi, for whatever reason and almost certainly over his own strenuous objections, couldn't.

Amanda’s first such shift had started in Forlini’s, with Barba seemingly attempting to decimate what remained of his liver. “Everything ok?” Amanda had asked mildly, concern mingling with amusement as she watched Barba throwing back scotch like water.

Barba had shrugged and mumbled some excuse about not sleeping well, and Amanda hadn't been able to stop herself from teasing, “Don't worry, Counselor. I value my job too much to let someone kill you, no matter how big of a pain in my ass you may be.”

That had at least startled Barba into laughter, and slowed his consumption of alcohol for the rest of the evening, though he was still well and truly soused by the time she took him home. “You know, Detective,” Barba said loudly as Amanda half-dragged him past the uniformed officer stationed at the front door of his apartment building, “you actually make a somewhat tolerable drinking companion.”

“Wish I could say the same thing about you,” Amanda had grumbled.

“We should do this again sometime,” Barba had sighed, leaning against his door as Amanda had been tasked with the pleasure of frisking him for his keys.

Amanda had just rolled her eyes, finally managing to fish his keys out of his pants pocket. “Yeah, Counselor, I think not,” she said, unlocking his door and letting him almost fall inside as she opened it. “Enjoy the hangover tomorrow morning.”

But they had done it again, after the threats had passed and they had been accidentally stood up by the rest of the squad, though this time without Barba trying to drown himself in scotch and Amanda actually able to drink something stronger than Coke. And maybe it was just that Amanda could drink as well, but she found that Barba had been right - they were good drinking companions, especially when they weren’t talking shop.

From there, it turned into a habit.

Every three weeks or so, they'd meet up for a night of drinking and bitching with the unspoken understanding that this, the three hours they'd spend together at Forlini’s, was a temporary truce at best, and that what they said there would never go outside those walls.

It was a comfortable arrangement, and surprising for both of them in terms of realizing how much they actually enjoyed each other’s company, at least in small doses and accompanied by liquor.

Barba was there when Amanda cried because she'd missed Jesse’s first steps after she'd been called in to work a double yet again, and he seemed to understand that she didn't want platitudes or comfort, just a literal shoulder to cry on and a murmured, almost so quietly that she might’ve missed it, “You’re a good mom, Amanda.”

And Amanda was there after the incident with Carisi and Tom Cole, when Barba dispensed with any appearances and ordered straight whiskey shots, downing them in quick succession as Amanda told him, over and over again, “Carisi’s ok, Barba. He's fine. He’s safe.”

Carisi himself was the subject of much of their shared bitching and ranting, though Amanda suspected from the get that Barba’s complaints were for vastly different reasons than her own. Both Carisi and Barba seemed to think that no one else could see how they looked at each other and spoke to each other and flirted with each other at any given opportunity.

Which was why, when she went to meet up with Barba after Carisi had blown up at him, Carisi’s harsh “I don't care about Barba” ringing in her ears, Amanda had expected some righteous fury on Barba’s part.

Instead, she was met with sullen silence that bordered on sadness.

Amanda let him sulk all the way through one drink before she propped her elbow on the bar and gave him a look. “When are you gonna do something about that boy?” she asked.

Barba blinked at her. “What boy?” he asked.

She rolled her eyes. “Carisi,” she said, and a dark look crossed Barba’s face. “I mean, watching y’all dance around each other stopped being funny a while ago. Now it's just pathetic.”

“I'm sure I don't know you're talking about,” Barba said, a note of cold warning in his voice.

A warning that she completely ignored.

“I mean, c’mon, Counselor, anyone with eyes can tell he’s head over heels for you. Why don’t you take pity on him and just ask him out?”

Barba drained his second drink of the evening, staring almost vacantly at the line of bottles behind the bar. “I did,” he said quietly.

It was Amanda’s turn to blink at him. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I did,” Barba repeated, gesturing for another drink. “And he turned me down.”

There were very few times in her life when Amanda had actually been rendered speechless, but this was one of them. She gaped at Barba, trying to make sense of what he’d just said. “He turned you _down_?”

A small, grim smile crossed Barba’s face. “Oh, he was very nice about it,” he assured her, something bitter twisting his voice. “Said he was flattered even, but that he's straight.”

Amanda couldn't help herself — she laughed. “Carisi, straight?” she laughed, though her laughter died when she saw that Barba didn't even look slightly amused. “Wait, seriously?”

Barba shrugged and lifted his drink to his lips. “So it would seem.”

Amanda shook her head slowly. “Huh,” she said, draining her own drink. “Seems I need to get my gaydar adjusted.”

“You and me both,” Barba muttered darkly.

“Do you think he’s in the closet or in denial?”

Barba threw her a look and Amanda shrugged. “I'm just sayin’, you and I both know he's as queer as a three dollar bill. So what do you think, closet case or denial?”

“I think he’s Catholic,” Barba pronounced dismissively.

Amanda nodded slowly. “So probably a combination of the two.” Again Barba gave her a look, one which Amanda returned. “Let's just say that I know a little bit what it's like. When it comes to ‘the gays’, Southern Baptist and Catholicism aren't that far apart.”

“Add Cuban into the mix and it sounds like we’d have a real party,” Barba muttered with a ghost of a smile.

“Your mama and mine could probably swap stories,” Amanda said with a chuckle, one that Barba did not return.

Instead, he ordered himself and Amanda another drink and lifted his in a mock toast. “In any case, I tried, he said no, and that’s the end of it.”

But as Amanda watched Barba drain his drink, she couldn’t help but think that wasn’t the end of anything.

* * *

 

Her suspicions were only solidified when things between Barba and Carisi continued to deteriorate and when Barba’s bitching about Carisi took on a very pointed direction, namely about a certain Miss 34B.

Jealousy was not becoming on Barba.

Not that Amanda would ever tell him that.

She valued her life.

But one night after a few too many Jack Daniels, she couldn’t help but tell him, “Maybe you should say some of this to Carisi. Tell him that he’s a different person around his little girlfriend than he is around the rest of us.” Not that Barba _knew_ that, of course, since he, like the rest of the squad, hadn’t actually met Carisi’s girlfriend, but Amanda figured the point still stood.

If the glare Barba sent her way was any indication, he didn’t agree. “Whatever,” he huffed, draining his scotch. “I took my chance and besides, I’m not the kind of person who sits around and waits in hopes that some idiot man changes his mind.”

The bitterness in his voice said otherwise. “And yet,” Amanda said, throwing all caution to the wind, “it’s not like you’ve moved on. So what are you waiting for if not Carisi?”

Amanda had never fully understood the phrase ‘if looks could kill’ until that moment, when Barba glared at her with such ferocity that she physically scooched away from him.

But he didn’t seem able to find a comeback, and Amanda took that as a sort of victory in its own right.

At least, until Barba ordered another drink, drained it in a single gulp, and stood, making his way across the bar without another word to Amanda, who watched with something like bemusement as Barba leaned in and whispered something to some random guy seated at a table. The guy smiled and stood, leaving the bar with Barba, who didn’t bother giving Amanda a second glance.

Amanda shook her head and turned back to the bar, sipping her own drink almost contemplatively. It would, she reflected, have been far more convincing a display if Barba hadn’t picked a guy who looked a little bit too much like Carisi.

* * *

 

Through mutual yet silent agreement, they both agreed to pretend it had never happened.

* * *

 

One night, Amanda couldn’t help but notice that Barba seemed particularly buoyant, which for all intents and purposes meant mostly that he was actually smiling for once.

But the truth was, he was more than smiling, practically unable to stop his grin as he sipped slowly at the scotch he was drinking with the amount of respect he once claimed scotch was owed, and Amanda let him finish half of his drink before asking, casually, “Did you hear about Carisi’s girlfriend dumping him?”

“Hm?” Barba said vaguely. “Oh, no, I hadn’t heard.”

But Amanda was pretty sure he was trying very hard not to grin.

* * *

 

Yet for all Barba’s clear happiness at Carisi finally breaking up with his girlfriend — or vice-versa, Amanda supposed, though given Carisi’s seeming lack of emotion on the subject, she felt it was more mutual than anything — there was no forward movement for Barba and Carisi.

Which she knew less from Barba actually saying anything, and more from the way his shoulders once again slumped as he returned to nursing his scotch, the circles around his eyes deepening once more.

But she had learned her lesson, and she no longer brought it up.

At least, until she had no choice.

“Can we talk?” she asked one night.

Barba frowned at her. “Of course,” he said, though there was a question in his inflection, mirrored in his furrowed brow.

Not that she could blame him.

Amanda took a deep breath before blurting, “When Carisi and I were in West Virginia, he tried to kiss me.” Barba froze, and Amanda hurried to add, “We’d both been drinking, and there was this bar fight, and…” She trailed off, mainly because her attempt to explain seemed to be doing more harm than good, Barba’s expression hardening and his grip on his glass tightening, his knuckles white. “He’s confused,” Amanda told him, something urgent in her tone, because she needed Barba to understand. “He doesn’t actually want me, Rafael — he doesn’t know what he wants.”

“He knows that he doesn’t want me.”

Barba’s voice was quiet, and tired, and with an air of defeat that Amanda had never heard in him before, and she had to physically bite back her initial denial, mainly because she was no longer sure that she could actually deny it.

“He doesn’t want me,” Barba repeated quietly when Amanda said nothing, staring straight ahead of himself. “And I don’t…” He trailed off and sighed. “I don’t know what I’m doing anymore,” he admitted. “Carisi’s straight, or so closeted he can see Narnia, and here I am, pushing 50 and holding onto hope that a man ten years my junior and more Catholic than the Pope might finally change his mind.”

“You love him,” Amanda said, equally quiet, and never more certain of that than she was in that moment. She had thought whatever this was with Barba and Carisi was a crush or something superficial, but looking at Barba now, seeing the way he sagged against the weight of what he felt, she knew it was more than that.

And probably more than Barba would ever admit.

Barba drained his drink. “I don’t think you can be in love with someone you don’t know,” he said, after a long moment. “And I haven’t known Carisi in months. Probably close to a year at this point. I...I’m in love with a version of him, maybe, one from a year and half ago, and maybe it’s time for me to finally realize that version of him is never coming back.” He shook his head slowly. “And maybe it’s time for me to move on.”

Amanda wished she had some kind of words of reassurance or comfort to offer him, but none came. “I’m sorry,” she offered, the words sounding painfully inadequate, even to her own ears.

Barba managed a small, pained smile. “You and me both,” he said.

* * *

 

Those two words were all she had to offer Carisi a few weeks later, when he stared at Olivia with hurt bewilderment as she told them both, “Barba said he had to move on. And so he’s resigned from the DA’s office.”

“I’m sorry,” Amanda told Carisi in an undertone as Olivia went back to her office. She meant it more than she could possibly say.

Carisi just shook his head. “But...why?” he asked softly.

There were a million reasons Amanda could offer, but all of them were contained within the walls of Forlini’s and her unspoken promise that what passed between her and Barba would never leave those walls.

So instead she shook her head, and she patted his shoulder, and she offered the only comfort she could. “Sometimes people just have to move on.”

“That doesn’t make it easier for the people they leave behind,” Carisi said, his voice raw and pained.

It didn’t.

And Amanda didn’t know what to say to make that better for any of them.


End file.
